Alfonso López de la Osa Escribano is Director of the Center of U.S. and Mexican Law at the University of Houston Law Center, and Adjunct Faculty on “Comparative Health Law” of the Health Law and Policy Institute.
“The Future of U.S.-Mexico Relations: Strategic Foresight" was published in July.
Sept. 2, 2020 - Alfonso López de la Osa Escribano, adjunct professor and director of the Center for U.S. and Mexican Law at the University of Houston Law Center, recently co-edited and co-authored a collection of scholarly essays called “The Future of U.S.-Mexico Relations: Strategic Foresight.”
In this book, various scholars have contributed to writing different prospective studies about how the relations between Mexico and the U.S. would be in the next 25 years. Using a futurist methodology, the scholars analyze a range of topics include socio-demographic dynamics, cultural and political changes to immigration, economy at the border and trade between the two countries, health and public issues, the energy industry, environmental protection of the border and more.
“With this strategic foresight methodology, each author selects between four and six drivers as primary areas of interest, exposing, based on indicators, up to three scenarios on how the relations between the U.S. and Mexico might be or evolve: a baseline or continuity scenario, an optimistic version, and a pessimistic one, as well as the implications each possibility has for both nations,” López de la Osa Escribano said.
For López de la Osa Escribano, he hopes the book provides an analysis on the future relationship between the two neighboring countries that he believes have more factors that unite them than separate them. That way, U.S. and Mexican officials can explore scenarios for strengthening their partnership.
“Even though we can’t predict the future, in unprecedented times due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and following the recent entry into force of the USMCA, this book is critical for anyone that wants to explore how could the U.S.-Mexico relations be in the years to come,” he said. “U.S. and Mexican officials can explore scenarios for strengthening their partnership.
“We would like to avoid undesired scenarios, anticipating and focusing on building a strong partnership between the world’s first economy, and one of the already leading, and also most promising countries in Latin-America.”
The strategic foresight was published in July of 2020 under the collection Law, Policy and Society at the University of Houston, by Arte Publico Press, a University of Houston-run publishing house.
